


Paradise Lost

by i_am_therefore_i_fight



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode: s05e16 Dark Side of the Moon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-09 23:55:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6929554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_am_therefore_i_fight/pseuds/i_am_therefore_i_fight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Can it be a sin to know? Can it be death?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. into this wild abyss

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at http://i-am-therefore-i-fight.tumblr.com/post/57137042523/paradise-lost.

Sam spares another glance at Dean’s tight, closed face, then turns to look back out the window of the Impala, wanting to vomit.  _I wish I’d gone to hell instead,_  he thinks for the hundredth time. If he had gone to hell, he would’ve been tortured, but Dean would have saved him and they’d be closer than ever. But they both went to heaven, and the divide between those two greatly divergent Paradises is still between them. The separation is a new kind of hell, and Sam doesn’t think he can take much more.

Swallowing twice to clear the bitter hardness from his throat, Sam manages to ask softly, tremulously: “Where are we going?”

He didn’t dare ask earlier. Dean hasn’t spoken a word to him since–

_–since he threw it away. He threw the amulet away. He threw it away._

That was hours ago.

So Sam is startled to hear Dean answer his query at once, voice rough with disuse and emotion:

“Stanford.”

For a moment, Sam doesn’t understand. It’s like a foreign word–it has no place in his hunter’s vocabulary, his life with Dean. Then realization hits and his stomach turns to ice.

“But–Lucifer–”

“Cas can help as well as you can.”

Sam feels like he’s been cut open.

“Stop the car,” he says roughly.

“I’m not pulling over so you can have a temper tantrum, Samuel,” Dean replies, hot and cold at the same time, angry and icy and aloof.

 _Samuel._  Sam struggles to get words out past the bile burning in his throat. “Dean, if you don’t let me out of this car, I’m gonna throw up on the goddamn dashboard.”

Dean spares Sam an icily contemptuous look, green eyes glittering, but pulls onto the shoulder of the road. Sam doesn’t even wait for the car to stop before flinging open the door, tumbling out onto his hands and knees and vomiting stomach acid into the gravel. He hears Dean getting out of the car, but he doesn’t look up–he’s too busy dry heaving and wishing he’d eaten something earlier. Dean’s silent anger wasn’t really conducive to hunger.

“You can try the guilt trip on me all you want, Sam. It’s not gonna change anything.”

Sam looks up to see Dean standing at the hood of the car, staring at him with those green eyes, lip curled stiffly like he can’t stand to get any closer.

“Dean–” Sam croaks, and the tears burst out of him fast and hard, accompanied by retching sobs that make his entire abdomen clench agonizingly.

Dean’s face contorts, twists, and he snarls,  _“No,_  Sam. You don’t get to be a little bitch about this. This is what you fucking wanted! So I’m giving it to you. I’m taking your ass back to fucking Stanford so you can go to fucking law school, and buy yourself a pretty house, and marry some dumb bitch who thinks you’re the best fucking lawyer who ever lived. That’s what you want. That’s what we’re gonna do. So get in the fucking car.”

“No.”

“Sam, you get your ass back in that car right now, or so help me–”

“Dean, stop it.” Dean has never loomed over him like this, not ever. They’ve had their fights, but Sam has never feared him. Not like this.

“I HAVEN’T EVEN STARTED YET!” Dean roars, looking as much beast as man, eyes burning like green suns. Turning, he kicks the tire of the car so hard that it groans, and then he storms off, stalking away into the trees lining the side of the road.

Sam curls up against the side of the Impala, burying his face in his knees, and tries to breathe.

—-

By the time Dean comes back, moving slowly like a much older man, Sam has managed to get his shaking mostly under control. There’s blood on Dean’s knuckles, and Sam has a vision of Dean punching a tree over and over again, heedless of the pain from his split skin and bruised fingers.

Dean looks at him dully for a moment, face dusty and taut, then circles around to the other side of the car out of Sam’s line of vision. Sam scrambles to his feet, stomach dropping– _what now?_ –but Dean doesn’t seem on the verge of exploding. He appears to have worked out most of his anger on the trunk of some tree. But there’s a blankness about him now that’s equally terrifying.

Dean reappears around the hood of the Impala and tosses Sam a water bottle, which the younger Winchester catches reflexively.

“Get in the car,” Dean says softly, tiredly; then he disappears around ot the driver’s side again.

Sam opens the passenger’s side door with a lightly shaking hand, sinks into the seat, and closes the door gently behind him. He feels ungrounded, almost unreal–like the wind could blow him away at any moment. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what to feel.

Dean doesn’t speak. He just puts the car in gear and pulls out onto the road again. He drives for half an hour in silence before he pulls into a gas station, parks, lowers his forehead to the wheel, and starts to cry.

Sam stiffens, aware that he’s the reason for the tears but wanting to comfort his brother anyway. He looks out the passenger window and listens to Dean’s quiet, aching sobs, stomach curling.  _I did this to you. I’m sorry, Dean. Oh, God, I’m so sorry._  He squeezes his eyes shut.  _What is wrong with me? How could I do this to him?_  Dean Winchester, greatest hunter in the world, slayer of demons, Sam’s badass, gunslinging, tough-guy, pain-in-the-neck soldier of a brother, is crying into the steering wheel of his car because he found out his little brother doesn’t want him.

_I wish I’d gone to hell instead._

Dean’s breath hitches and he makes a pitiful noise, and then Sam can’t take it anymore. He opens his eyes, turns, places his hand lightly on Dean’s shaking shoulder, and says “Dean” so softly it’s hardly more than a breath.

Dean’s sobs take on a renewed vigor at his touch. He goes willingly into Sam’s impulsive embrace, burying his face in his little brother’s shoulder and sliding both arms around his waist, quickly dampening Sam’s flannel with saline. Sam feels tears spilling fast and hot down his own face; he tightens his arms around Dean, aching for his brother but still guiltily relieved that he’s no longer being given the silent treatment.

“Dean,” he croaks tearfully, “I’m sorry.”

If he thought Dean couldn’t cry any harder, he was wrong. “I  _love_  you,” Dean manages to grind out between violent, wrenching sobs, half-accusing, half-beseeching. The raw betrayal in his voice sends Sam reeling with renewed guilt. He wants to say  _I love you too_ , but he doesn’t dare–not because it isn’t true, but because he doesn’t feel like he has any right to say it. Not now.

“I know,” he whispers instead, choking on tears and burying his face in Dean’s warm shoulder. “I know, Dean.”

Sam doesn’t know how long he sits that way, twisted uncomfortably in his seat to hold Dean’s wracked body, listening to Dean’s loud, helpless sobs soften first into gentle weeping, then sniffling, and finally into silence punctuated by quiet, ragged breathing.

At last Dean draws away, slumping back in his seat with his eyes on the steering wheel, wearing the same terrifyingly blank, empty expression from before. Sam swallows, not knowing whether to feel hope or fear, digging his nails into the material of his jeans as he watches Dean and waits for a sign of whats to come.

After what seems like a long time, Dean sighs–wistful, hollow–and rubs his face, then looks dully at Sam. “Let’s get somethin’ to eat,” he says without inflection, and gets out of the car.

––

After hours of silence, Dean parks the car in front of a motel not too far from Stanford.

Sam is pale, eyes shining with pain, nails biting into his palms. “Dean, please don’t do this,” he says stiffly.

Dean turns the car off, not looking at him. “Have to, Sammy.”

Tears well up in Sam’s eyes again and he bites the inside of his lip hard, trying to hang on to whatever composure he has. “What do I have to do,” he says slowly, voice cracking, “to convince you that I’m sorry?”

Dean shoots him a quick look—eyes so full it hurts—and then returns to staring out the windshield. “I’m not doing this to punish you, Sam.”

“Then _why_?” His voice breaks and he turns away, angrily wiping wetness from his eyes, determined to stay cool.

“Because… you… need things. Things I can’t give you. I thought—” Dean’s voice wavers and he stops, clears his throat, and continues unsteadily. “I thought I could… I thought it would be enough. Thought I’d be enough. I’ve been selfish. I’m sorry.”

“So stay with me,” Sam whispers, turning to look at his brother.

Dean closes his eyes, looking very fragile, and says, so softly: “There’s still people that need saving, Sam.”

Sam closes his eyes too, feeling like someone is slowly digging a knife into the center of him.

“I can’t give up on them. I just can’t. I’m sorry. But I can give you this.”

“Dean,” Sam whispers brokenly.

“I love you, Sammy. Don’t ever forget that.”

“I won’t.” He can hardly speak now, and the tears make him half blind when he opens his eyes.

—-

He keeps thinking he’ll do something. He’ll refuse to get out of the car, or he’ll stall Dean some other way. There’s still time to change this, to convince Dean that they can be okay. But there isn’t, and he doesn’t—he gets out, and he watches the Impala pull away, and he goes into the motel and checks in with the credit card Dean gave him. Numb, unbelieving. And he gets up the next morning and goes to the necessary appointments, and Stanford welcomes him back with open arms. When he calls to tell Dean how it went, the call goes straight to voicemail. He calls again. And again. After a while it occurs to him that he isn’t expecting an answer—he’s still calling because he wants to hear Dean’s voice, even if it’s just telling him to leave a message.

He doesn’t call again after that. 


	2. all is not lost, the unconquerable will

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This horror will grow mild, this darkness light.

Two years pass.

—-

A monster brings them back together, as monsters sometimes do. A mirror-dwelling ghost, like Bloody Mary so many years ago, falls victim to her own gaze in a warehouse full of mirrors and the whole place implodes like a glass bomb. Absurdly, as they are escaping, Sam can’t help thinking of the exchange they had after Bloody Mary very nearly killed him.

_“Sammy? Sammy!”_

_“…it’s Sam.”_

When he said that, it had been two years since anyone had called him Sammy, and somehow the name–dropping from Dean’s lips with all the tenderness in the world–had felt like an accusation.

It’s been two years again. The parallel isn’t lost on Sam. But this time, when–if–Dean calls him Sammy, he thinks he might weep from relief.

Dean actually doesn’t say anything to him, even once they get outside. Instead, he tosses aside the crowbar and the fire-ax he’s been carrying, grabs Sam, and pulls his baby brother into a rough hug. The initial contact is like a badly dislocated joint snapping backing into place–it hurts sharply for a moment, but then everything fits back together and there’s a wash of relief so intense it leaves Sam dizzy. Two years disappear in a puff of dust and it’s like they’ve never been apart.

They stand there for a long time, hanging onto each other’s bruised bodies with all their might, breathing together, drinking each other in. Sam takes a few minutes to relish the fact that Dean's  _here_ , Dean came when Sam needed him, and  _Dean_ hugged  _him_ , not the other way around. From the way Dean’s trembling and digging his fingers into Sam’s back and pressing every possible inch of himself against Sam, it’s clear that Dean missed him as much as he missed Dean.

“Hey Dean,” Sam says, muffled against the side of his brother’s neck, lips vibrating against Dean’s skin, “let’s go get a beer.”

Dean gives a little groan of longing. "Best idea you've ever had, little brother."


End file.
